Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time

The Short

Pros
- The free sequel to the smash hit Plants vs Zombies
- Did I mention it's free? That's a pretty big plus
- Despite having microtransactions, the entire game can be beaten and is still fun without spending a cent
- New plants, levels, and time periods are great
- Tons of new challenges for each level, not to mention unlockable minigames and rewards
- Plant food was an excellent idea to give you something to do in the downtime
- Graphics seem marginally improved and look great on iPad
- Cone-head zombies in Egypt have little pharaoh hats. But still cones. That's pretty great.

Cons
- Currently exclusive to iOS
- Some plants can only be gotten through purchasing, and they're quite overpriced
- Missing an actual ending to the "story," which I assume will be unlocked later
- Challenges become repetitive quite quickly
- Hunting for randomly dropped keys is a chore
- Where's the zen garden?
- Doesn't quite have the same magic as the first game

Burn them all.

The Long

I, like the rest of the world, eagerly awaited a sequel to Popcap's 2009 PC hit, Plants vs Zombies. I played the game on almost every platform imaginable, unlocking everything in the iOS version and beating every mini-game on the PC version with gusto. It was a simple game that held a level of complexity to it that made it both engaging and easy to pick up. In short, it was a perfect casual game.

Four freaking years later and we finally have it: Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time. Exclusive (for the time being) to iOS devices and sporting a free-to-play model that is very indicative of the recent acquirement of Popcap by EA (seriously guys: everything doesn't need microtransactions), the outlook for this game was surprisingly grim. Did it ruin the magic of PvZ with it's touch-pad exclusivity and money-grubbing unlockables? Or will your plants still be soiled with delight at the prospect of murdering zombies?

Eh, a bit of both I guess.

Crazy Dave: Zombie Expert.

There's sort of a plot to this one. Sort of. Crazy Dave finally eats the magic taco you gave him back in PvZ, and he likes it so much he wants to travel back in time in his talking, time-travelling motor home to eat it again. Of course, it all goes wrong and you're slammed back into various time periods, specifically ancient egypt, a pirate "era," and the wild west. It seems zombies were around then, too, and in spades (this is seriously the worst world to live in), so plant your zombies on the tile floors and get killin'!

The dialogue is mildly amusing, but after a while it gets obnoxious. The charm of Crazy Dave was that he didn't show up after every single level in the first game, but now he seems to be the star character. While his insanity is endearing to a point, it also becomes grating how unbelievably stupid he is, not to mention his car sounds like the guide from Nintendoland and is just as static in her personality. 

The map is very "Mario World"esque. 

Another major change is the story mode, or rather, how it's presented. Ditching the linear level progression from the first game, it instead ops for a more similar approach to how it was done in it's Facebook game, Plants vs Zombies: Adventures. You progress down a fairly straight path, Mario World style, until you reach the Stargate (tm) at the end of each level. Along the way there's various doors that can be unlocked with keys. Behind these unlocks are new plants, powerups (such as getting a refund when digging up a plant) and the minigame portion of the game. All gated doors are some sort of minigame, and all require keys specific to that world to unlock.

How do you get keys? Well, two ways. Either they randomly drop (and the drop rate isn't awful, to be fair, though you'll have to burn through a few rounds of that world's Endless Mode to farm them up), or you can  just pay to open the gate. So on a scale of one to super offensive in the microtransactions-frustration-o-meter, the doors aren't that bad. 

Though having six keys left over in Egypt while I still need six more in Wild West is a bit annoying.

Key get!

The gameplay itself is identical to the original game, down to the grid layout. Egypt gives you a full plot, with later levels popping up destroyable gravestones to slow you down a bit. The pirate level mixes it up with a gangplank over water on the right side, with pirates swinging in on ropes for the shorter lanes. Wild west has probably the best new addition: minecarts. You can plant only a single plant per track, but you can move it freely and at any time up and down. It's a neat trick and makes me wish each level before it had possessed as clever an idea. 

There's two other new things with regard to actual gameplay that should be mentioned: plant food and powerups. See, coins actually don't buy anything anymore, at least not in terms of unlocks. All the money you get is used for in-level powerups. The first is plant food. Green-colored zombies will randomly drop plant food, or you can pay some of your coins to get one immediately. What they do varies depending on the plant you put it on. Sunflowers drop a jackpot of suns. Pea-shooters blast out a plethora of peas. Iceberg lettuce freezes all zombies on the screen, and so on. This is actually the best new feature because it adds a level of interactivity during matches that the previous games didn't have. It also allows the levels to be much harder, forcing you to ration your plant food and use it wisely. Then again, you can always "cheat" and buy more on the fly if you suck, but I beat the entire game without ever having to buy any more.

Fire at will!

The other addition is payable powerups. These are also used during matches, and can only be obtained by spending coin. You have three: a "pinch" move that kills all the zombies you pinch, a "flick" move that launches them back (or off screen), and a "hold" move that electrocutes them. They all have a limited timer and (in some levels) can only be bought a set number of times. Again, these cost coins.

And, as you have already guessed, you can pay real money for coins. However, if you have any ability at Plants vs Zombies, you won't need any of these powerups until attempting to tackle some of the harder minigames in the later levels, meaning you'll have a massive pileup of cash to blow anyway. Again, I beat every level and got every star and never spent a cent, while using powerups liberally at the end. So, still ok on the microtransaction front. 

My only downside to all of this is that, if you do use the powerups liberally, it kind of completely kills the challenge. This is one of those "you can just pay to win the whole game" problems we see, but since this is a single player game and not an MMO, the only person's fun you are cheating is your own. Trust me: don't buy coins. You don't need them. 

THIS is the stuff I don't like. 

I think I'd better finish off the microtransactions talk by talking about the part I don't like: the store. Now, let me say this: you get tons of plants as part of the game, and even more by unlocking doors. This includes a variety of new plants. While the count isn't quite as high as PvZ, they do seem to have streamlined their purposes down a bit better (there are no "upgrades" anymore; double headed suns are just their own plant, for instance) and the arsenal they give you is more than well enough equipped to destroy just about anything in your path.

The annoying part is there is no way, either through in-game currency or unlocks, to get to some of the bonus plants and powerups. The powerups/plants featured above can only be gotten with real money. You could have fifty billion coins and you still couldn't buy the squash; not an option. I wouldn't be bitter, but they gated the Ice Pea behind this dollar cost, and he was one of my staples in the first game. Jerks.

The other annoying part is these powerups are way too expensive. Nine bucks for the chili and a sun powerup? Seriously? And with no options to just drop like $15 and get all the upgrades, you do have to buy them all separate for an inflated price. At that point I'd rather just pay $6 for the app and get everything. But what do I know about business? I'm not EA, the most loved of all video game companies. 

Snow Pea, I love you, but not $4 worth. 

All that aside, considering the absolutely absurd amount of content you get for free with this game, I really shouldn't be complaining. Once I looked in the shop once I never went back, and I was happier for it. Buying stuff just wasn't an option for me. While the gameplay was a little too similar to the first game to keep me really engaged, I still got sucked in. And while having to hunt for Stars (which meant replaying earlier levels with special, "hard" objectives) was fun at first, the objectives get competitive and you have to do the same ones for every time period, and I felt they were really trying to tack on some time to this bad boy.

At least the game looks good. I was kind of a hater of the new art style at first, but after playing it a bit I don't mind. It's more "hand drawn" than before, and the plants have considerably more frames of animation, which is nice. The new mixup of zombies is the real highlight, though, with each period sporting a new batch of obnoxious zombies  for you to kill. I just really wish there was a "Time Vortex" level where I could have Camel Zombies along with the Pirate Zombies and the Wild West Chicken zombies. Maybe in DLC.

The Texas flag with a brain on it is a nice touch.

All in all, Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time is a great game that's store leaves a bit of a sour taste in your mouth. However, if you can look past the microtransactions and repetitive star-hunt that ends each world, there's a lot to love here. It's almost everything one could ask for: more zombies, more plants, more levels, more tricks, and more ways to play. Honestly, if it weren't for the iOS exclusivity and the overpriced DLC, I'd say this game very nearly surpassed it's predecessor. 

However, there is still something missing. The magic of the first game, which might be no fault of this game itself, but that PvZ felt so novel. In either case, it's good to finally have a sequel to one of my favorite tower defense games, and if you happen to own an iOS device it's a must download. Because...seriously. It's free. 

(Now port it to Android and PC already!)

Four out of five stars. 

Needs more boomerangers.